Your First Controllerism Routine – In the Studio With Ean Golden

In today’s tutorial video I go deep into the basics of building a basic controllerism technique through cue point juggling that anyone can learn. With a few key timing and setup principles under your belt, it becomes very easy to build expressive live remixes that will work in a real DJ set.

Here’s the acapella and the instrumental track bundled together – these files are for educational purposes only!

Thank You Ean and everyone at DJTT, your website has become my “go-to” source for all things DJ. I have been a user of Live and Maschine for a while now but I always wanted to learn more about DJing. When you made the Ozzy routine video, I thought, now this is a style I could use. So, I just got an NI S-2 and was jumping all over the place, trying all of its features. This video gave me a good starting point for my lessons, sometimes we forget the importance of basics and therefore lack a solid musical foundation. Also, love the weekly DJTT soundpacks, I appreciate the time and creativity that Mad Zach puts into these awesome samples (some are in my Maschine Mikro, right now). Take Care and I can’t wait till I get a MIDI Fighter! Joseph W. aka WaterRabbit, Cape Cod, MA, USA

Verry Veryy good clean tutorial. Great technique and easy to understand. I can dig it

ElectroFist

Ean should make a lot more videos like this with the VCI-400 EGE so people that bought it can make more use of it and better understand what it’s capable of! Keep em comin Ean!

Ak

I’ve always wondered how Ean was doing controllerism with acapellas, this tutorial is amazing! Thank you very much!

James Corr

This is truely invaluable !!!! Such a simple process but would have never thought of it on my own. There’s tons of other videos out there, but this is exactly what I’ve been looking for awhile!!

Safadao

Great and very helpful tutorial. These are definitely the types of vids I would love to see more of.

Aaron Luncford

Thank you so much. Being new to this myself, I’m really finding your videos to be a valuable source of information

Caris the Gypsy

Ean, I love your style, you have a great ease in how you teach these tricks, you move through topics quickly so you don’t get bored, but not too quickly that you can’t get it, plus you mix in some nice humor “This guy, whose a little bit of a freak” lmao. Please keep it up!!

I think if ur doing this in traktor u mean beatgrid the acapella? I guess it depends if your playing stop mode like ean showed you dont have too because its going to be your own timing when u press the buttons. Cue point juggling on play mode might me another story

I thought about asking this same question, and then I realized, of course it is. Maybe not quite as clean as I think you would need to drop your four cue points into an impulse or a drum rack, but there might be another way to do it, personally going to experiment with this and figure it out, looks like a fun technique for live performance.

Djbrianh

Excellent video, I would love to see a video series like this on how to remix live, certain elements to deal with and being able to bring something like in the video into your set while using remix decks!

celtic-dj

thanks for the tutorial…good tips…

Mihaly

Thanks a lot for the insight! Awesome work!

Jim

Awesome vid! Gives us newbies something to start off with and practice!

Djskratchworx19

was waiting for this videos for so looooonnnggg!!!!….thanks DJ Tech Tools!…i just this is not the last one… :)

Keep it up!

Anonymous

Back to the basics, this is the essence of what DJTT is all about. Great job.

Too bad you used such a cheesy sample, almost seems like you are not taking this whole routine seriously but more as a gimmick. If you had used better vocals (Vanilla Ice, really?) to blend in with deep house this video would have been way more powerful.

Using these cheesy samples, you are just giving feed to the opinion that controllerists are too focused on arcade tricks and don’t care enough about the music.

Wow kid. This was a great example of how to use various techniques.. which is the point of the tutorial. The samples/vocals dont even matter. Vent about something else.

Anonymous

The point of techniques like cue point juggling is to enrich the music you’re playing. In the end, dj-ing is all about the music and not some fancy arcade skills. Ean knows this and should have acted accordingly.

By degrading that track with some horrible Vanilla Ice samples, he’s giving a bad example to newcomers for which this tutorial was made.

Tragil11

This tutorial is about beatjuggling technics to practice. Not about how to build a dj set you are judging a tutorial because of YOUR music preference. He could have used bieber’s vocals for all i care. I put this into practice with the music I consider is best.

Jay

Hes jst showing how to beat juggles with a cpl effects on it….. Quit taking it so serious you Zilch!

Back up, back up! Who was that crazy dude with the ninja fingers?! I want to see that video.

Anonymous

That dude is Jeremy Ellis.

Clark

Ordering myself an S4 on monday and been wondering how to do make some good remixs with acapellas… this series of vids is showing me the way!

LmnLm3

THIS is what DJTT is REALLY about! Keep this stuff up and I’ll be here all the time!!!

Anonymous

Nice tutorial Ean. Thanks!

scamo

Jim

Thanks for the video. I’m just getting into some controllerism routines and this is really helpful.

Question: I started out with Ableton and know it in and out now. But would it be worthwhile to learn/buy a Traktor setup? It seems foreign to me since I started DJing with Ableton but everyone seems to use Traktor.

Anonymous

Use what you are comfortable with. There are no correct setups – I like Traktor because you can drop tracks in as you feel but you’re kinda constrained with the effects, Ableton Live users like the effects chains and Max4Live and are willing to spend more setup time to get these. As soon as something comes along that beats Traktor I’ll be the first to bail on NI, but until that day it’s my basic tool. I do love cutting up sounds in Live though, so they both have a place.

FUCK YEA this is what I’m talking about! PERFECT TUTORIAL. I felt like you were talking to me in the beginning, Ive made a comment in the past about a video I cant recall which one but it was hard to tell if it was all done live.. but enough of that this was awesome! I’ve been coming here for over a year and this is the best video yet and why I come! Simple tips like adjusting the cue points which is like a DUH moment! Other tips I liked: use all 4 fingers (wouldnt have thought of), showing controller exclusive techniques, the use of it in cue mode and back and forth/sampling.. you just really went into the techniques a lot which was awesome. Defiantly on par with the S4 tutorial which was awesome. Question, you are zoomed in way more than me, thats what you’d recommend? Only when doing routines? In the s4 tutorial you arent I believe… new to 2.0?

Need better libraries rawr what a pain.

DJ ForcedHand

Very good educational video. This really showcases why someone would want to use a controller. Yes, it’s harder to do this, but it’s worth it.

Best video in a while. I was familiar with this workflow as its the same technique I use when playing live as well as dicing up samples for a remix. However it was really great to see exactly how you do it ean. Thanks a ton!

Jeffrey Karlan

Thank you to Ean and the DJ Techtools crew. These tutorials are an invaluable resource to new DJ’s/ Controllerists. I’ve been watching and rewatching these tutorial video backlog for the last 2 years. I didn’t own any gear. Just watching to see if there was enough content out there to learn the craft. I finally plunged and purchased gear from DJ Techtools. Providing the files to practice along with Ean is amazingly helpful. I’m so grateful for this resourse. Keep em coming

Great Vid. this is something I am really trying to get involved with and this takes a lot of the frustrating guess work out of setting it up and concepts. When can we see more of this? One thing I would really like to see in a tutorial is common names for some of these mappings in traktor. I am still nooB at mappings and would like to what parameters to assign to what pad or knob. Working with a korg PadKontrol and a Hercules controller.

jimmymac

Hurray Ean’s back doing what he does best…vestax controller tutorial videos!
These are the kind of videos the brought me to this site years ago with the vci100.I prey for more…nice work Ean!

Kyle Thompson

yeah got myself the new vestax vci 400 ege and lovin it.

Mackie

thanks

Fooshead

(at 3:38) i know you said ‘every 4 counts’ but you set them every 2 counts.
i make use of traktor’s ability to label cue points, something like ‘on2!’ if it’s in the
middle of a measure at beat2. i know for triggering and jagged sample cuts, this is irrelevant, but if you let it ride out playing to your primary song, it’ll be in sync but 2 beats off.

Sunil

Thanks Ean …. cant wait to try it on my Twitch.

DJ ForcedHand

I assume Ean’s going to show us how to use the Traktor Remix decks very soon. The subtleties of using samples instead of cue points on a track are very interesting and something you can REALLY explore with a Twitch (I love mine too).